A Letter to J. V. Stalin[1](December 11, 1912)

Written:Written December 11, 1912Published:Published for the first time.

      Sent from Cracow to St. Petersburg.

      Published according to a copy found in Police Department archives.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages427-429.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Dearfriend, local Polish papers report that Jagiello has been admitted
into the group, and has been granted a voice but no

vote.[2]If that is true, it is a definite victory for the Party
principle. In view of the agitation carried on byLuch, it is
necessary:
(1) To publish an article inDyen[3](I am sending a draft
today), ... in the

Collegium[4](we must by all means teach them—doing so while they are
with us here—to respond to everything with resolutions and immediately
send copies of them here). Here is a tentative draft of such a resolution:
“Having examined all the circumstances of Jagiello’s admission into the
Social-Democratic group, having studied the articles about it in the
Marxist organ,Pravda, and in the newspaper of the liquidators,Luch, and taken into account So-and-So’s report on the debate
about it in the Social-Democratic Duma group and on the opinions of the
various Social-Democratic organisations of Russia, the Collegium resolves:

to recognise that the refusal to admit Jagiello with the right to vote was
the only proper way out from the point of view of Party principle, since
Jagiello is not a member of the Social-Democratic Party and was elected to
the Fourth Duma against the will of the majority of the electors in the
worker curia of the city of Warsaw. The Collegium condemns the anti-Party
agitation carried on by the Bund and the liquidators in favour of admitting
Jagiello into the group and expresses the hope that the granting of a
consultative voice to Deputy Jagiello may help in rallying all the
class-conscious Polish workers closer around the Polish Social-Democrats
and in merging them completely with the workers of all nationalities into
integral organisations of the R.S.D.L.P.”

If,contrary to expectations, the liquidators have won and Jagiello has
been admitted, it is still necessary, and doubly so, to have a resolution
similar in content, expressing regret and appealing to the Party as a
whole.

Itis highly important, furthermore, for the Collegium to “correct
itself” on the well-known resolution of November 13 and adopt a new
one. Something like this: “Having examined all the circumstances of the
strike of November 15, the Collegium finds that the warnings against the
strike both from the Social-Democratic group and from the St. Petersburg
Committee were prompted solely by the fact that part of the organisation
was not ready to go into action on that day. However, events showed that
nonetheless the movement of the revolutionary proletariat assumed a large
scale and developed into street demonstrations in the name of a republic,
an eight-hour working day, and confiscation of the landed estates, thus
raising the entire working-class movement in Russia to a higher
plane. There fore the Collegium emphatically condemns the propaganda
against revolutionary strikes which the liquidators, their ...  group andLuchare carrying on, and recommends the workers to devote all
their efforts to more extensive, thorough and concerted preparations for
street demonstrations and political protest strikes, which should be made
as short as possible (one-day) and concerted. The Collegium will try to
develop a campaign for a strike and demonstration on January 9, 1913, with
a special protest against the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov,
which enslaves Russia and drenches her in blood.”

Next,it is highly important and essential for the five (curia)
deputies to draft a well-grounded resolution on the Badayev case. Something
like this: “The five deputies from the worker curia, having considered the
baiting of Comrade Badayev by the liquidators inLuchand among
the St. Petersburg workers, have resolved:
(1) not to submit this matter to the Duma group, since the latter has
admitted Badayev and no objection was raised in the group to his admission;

(2) to investigate the conditions of Badayev’s election, provided he
abstains from voting on this matter;
(3) the fact, established and verified by the five deputies, that
(a) the anti-liquidationist mandate was printed beforehand,and was adopted unanimously by the delegates’ meeting, all the electors and
delegates who backed Badayev acting in concert and unity and as staunch
fellow-thinkers, at the request of the St. Petersburg Committee of the
R.S.D.L.P.;
(b) that at the meeting of the Social-Democratic delegates fifteen persons
voted for the St. Petersburg Committee’s list and nine for the liquidators
and that not all of the delegates and electors ofLuchbehaved as
fellow-thinkers of the liquidators, some of them (Sudakov and others)
vacillating;
(c) that when three electors had been elected from each side, Badayev’s
supporters did their duty by moving that the matter be settled by drawing
lots to prevent the dispute from being revealed to the bourgeoisie;
(d) that the very fact that Badayev’s supporters tabled this motion and the
fact that the liquidators refused ... the question of P. and

M.[5](a liquidator)—therefore we have resolved: to recognise that
Badayev is undoubtedly the elected representative of the majority of the
worker Social-Democrats of St. Petersburg and is in fact a candidate at the
request of the St. Petersburg Committee; that the entire responsibility for
the disorganisation of the Social-Democratic Party elections in the
St. Petersburg worker curia falls on the liquidators, who sought to
frustrate the will of the majority, knowing themselves to be in a minority;
and that the liquidators’ refusal to draw lots was an outrageous violation
of what is the duty of every

Social-Democrat,[6]a violation unheard of in the working-class
movement. We have resolved to publish this resolution in the press and to
take concerted action among the workers for Badayev and against
liquidationist agitation.”

Thisresolution is essential. The Badayev case has already got into the
world press. Steklov has printed evasive but foul things inDie Neue
Zeit. And what is contained in the pamphlet which the liquidators have
published in the German language for the International Congress is simply
preposterous. We cannot keep silent. It is for the curia deputies to check
the facts and exonerate Badayev, with Badayev himself abstaining, of
course.

[1]Lenin’sletter was sent from Cracow to Stalin in St. Petersburg on
November 28 (December 11), 1912. It had been copied by N. K. Krupskaya in
invisible ink. On the way the letter was intercepted, decoded and copied on
a typewriter by the police. The copy of the letter was found in the Police
Department archives. Some of the words could not be decoded and there are
omissions in the text.

[2]Jagiello,J. I.—a member of the Polish Socialist Party
(P.S.P.), was elected deputy for Warsaw to the Fourth Duma. The Bolsheviks
strongly objected to Jagiello’s admission into the Social-Democratic group
because he had been elected to the Duma thanks to the support of the
bourgeoisie and the bloc of the P.S.P. and the Bund.  When the issue was
first put to the vote, the group split, six Menshevik deputies voting for
and six Bolshevik deputies against Jagiello. With the arrival of the Right
Menshevik Mankov, deputy for Irkutsk, the Mensheviks gained a majority and
Jagiello was admitted into the group. But under pressure from the Bolshevik
deputies his rights within the group were restricted:

he was granted a voice but no vote on all inner-Party questions.

[3]Dyen(The Day)—a name given to the newspaperPravdato evade the censor.

[4]Thereis an omission in the text of the document. TheCollegiumwas the Bolshevik section of the Social-Democratic group
in the Fourth Duma.

[5]Severalwords are missing in the letter. “P.”—N. G. Poletayev, a
Bolshevik member of the Third Duma. The liquidationist “M.”—apparently
Y. Mayevsky (a pseudonym of V. A. Gutovsky), one of the contributors to the
liquidationistLuch.

[6]Thedelegates from the worker curia of St. Petersburg Gubernia for the
Fourth Duma met on October 5 (18), 1912, with 50 delegates present. Of the
six electors elected by the delegates, four were Bolsheviks.

Thetsarist government was afraid that the Social-Democrats might win
in the worker curia and therefore it cancelled the election of delegates in
twenty-one St. Petersburg factories. In reply, the St. Petersburg Committee
of the Bolsheviks called on the workers for a one-day political strike. The
strike involved about 100,000 workers. The government had to give in and
announced supplementary elections. At all the factories where these
elections were held the workers adopted a “Mandate of the St. Petersburg
Workers to Their Workers’ Deputy”. On October 17 (30) the Mandate was
passed by a new gubernia meeting. But during the second election of
electors the vote was not taken by platforms, with the result that three
Bolsheviks and three liquidators were elected. The Bolsheviks proposed to
the liquidators that lots should be cast to decide who was to be nominated
for election to the Duma for the worker curia. The liquidators rejected the
proposal. The gubernia meeting of electors elected A. Y. Badayev, a
Bolshevik, for the worker curia of St. Petersburg Gubernia.